About the Authors

Michael Aaronson: I’m currently a junior in the Ross School of Business with an emphasis in Finance and a minor in Applied Statistics. I enjoy hanging out with friends and family, traveling, playing sports, and watching T.V. I will be spending part of my summer studying in China and the remained in New York for my finance internship. I choose to enroll in Philosophy 162 because the concept of morality at UM interested me. More specifically, the topic of affirmative action with respect to college admissions was one that really caught my attention. I felt this topic caused a lot of debate in our class discussions and was one that impacted almost every student in the room.

Andrea Manoppo: My name is Andrea. I am a University of Michigan student in Cellular & Molecular Biology and pursuing a Master's in Biomedical Engineering in the coming Fall. I am Chinese-Indonesian, born in Ann Arbor but raised in Indonesia up until the country's political upheaval. Since then, it has been a drastic transition as a student at a highly restrictive Indonesian state school, to a liberal arts American magnet school, and finally to the University of Michigan College of Engineering. All these systems had their moral strengths and weaknesses and for that reason, Philosophy 162 was interesting because the moral issues that education faces seems rarely taught in schools themselves.

Anna Starodubtseva: My name is Anna and I’m a first-year undergraduate student in the College of Engineering with a focus in mechanical engineering. I came to the University of Michigan from Colorado, where I loved spending time in the mountains doing outdoor activities like skiing, hiking, and camping. I also love traveling and hope to eventually spend a summer abroad in Europe within my time here at the university. Philosophy 162 seemed like an interesting class to me because it deals with morality at the university and I thought it was cool that I could relate to it. I was excited to explore the topic of affirmative action because it’s extremely controversial, so I was looking forward to examining opposing sides of the issue in order to form my own opinion about affirmative action’s place in higher education.